Sam Sunday – Feline Rule Breaker

I showed one of our cat Samantha’s new favorite hangout places on Friday. She does like to explore the whole house, though she tends to stick to her own rooms most of the time.

Checking out either my shoes or the dog leashes, I’m not sure which!

When we moved into our new house I vowed that she would no longer be allowed on the kitchen counters. The only place to conveniently feed her at the old house was on the kitchen counter, but here at the new house we thankfully have other options.

Even though Sam now has her own little “suite” of rooms to hang out in, away from the dogs, when she wanders the house, where is the one place she wanted to go?

Yup. Of course, I have to cut her some slack here since I was sitting at the counter so I think she just wanted to be with me. But I’ve started putting fresh flowers in that vase on the counter and I don’t want her getting into them. Of course she has; so now if she’s wandering the house and I’m not watching her I have to move the flowers to the center island where she can’t get at them.

I can’t win! What is the attraction with the kitchen counter anyway? I assumed with her food no longer on there she wouldn’t care about it. It’s either me being there, or more likely now, the flowers! I can’t help but think of my late paternal grandmother, who liked cats but always told me she couldn’t understand people who let their cats on the kitchen counter; that drove her crazy. I always just smiled; and I’m sure she’s looking down at me now, shaking her head. 🙂

Ah, totally forgot about the kitchen counters with my guesses as to where she had been that you didn’t want her! But yeah, that would just seem Normal to her to jump up there, I would guess, different kitchen counters or not…

I’ve honestly never had any luck keeping my cats off the counters. The best I’ve done was target trained them and taught them up (jump up) and down (jump down) so at least I can get them off the counters without resorting to aversives. My husband can’t stand one of our two cats so it can definitely be frustrating when they wander around on the counters. We also have a “no animals in the kitchen” when cook and there’s food around. I also make sure that I disinfect the counters daily if not more. Silly cats.. They just like to be high up.. even though they have 4 cat trees. Speaking of which, you may want to try putting a cat tree near the counter so she has a spot. I’ve heard that helps and it does sort of work at our house.

We’ll have to give that a try! I’m really OK with her being on the counters as long as there’s not food around like you said. So far she’s sticking to the seating area, not the cooking area, so hopefully that continues.

I think it is because she is used to being fed on the counter, she is still associating it with those GOOD things!!!!!! I always have kept our kitchen baby gated so Dakota can’t get to where Cody is. Cody has never been fed on the counter, does it keep him from going up there (by the way he isn’t allowed up there), but he still sneaks and does it!

My gramma’s cat never goes on the counters or tables, but cat bro Bert pretty much lives on the counters. We can’t get him off. They have invisible fencing for indoors which can be used on cats. That may be our only solution, but not sure if we really want to get into that at this point.

I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself if I write this–but so far Soth doesn’t get on our counters. He was also fed on the counter at the apartment, but this kitchen doesn’t have a good space for that–he used to get on the non-eating counters in the apartment to knock things around when his bowl was empty, but he’s chosen new surfaces to clear at the new house. He does spend a lot of time on the kitchen table (but it’s right under a prime bird-watching window) and I had to put my pretty plant I had on the table in one of the spare bedrooms where the door can be shut and now the only people who get to enjoy it are the neighbors who see it through the window 🙁

My Mom could never stand it either when her SIL would allow their skillions of cats to walk all over their kitchen counters (and the table!). It drove Mom nuts! Our dogs were not even allowed to stand up against the counters, never mind walk on them. I guess it’s just one of those things those of us without cats don’t understand.

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